Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronic contracting and more particularly to affirmative consent contract management in a mobile device.
Description of the Related Art
Affirmative consent refers to the movement in which two individuals choose not to engage in intimate relations absent the affirmative consent to do so by each of the individuals. Previously, it had been customary for two individuals to choose not to engage in intimate relations upon one of the individuals affirmatively objecting to intimate relations. But, recent disputes at various academic institutions have called into question the wisdom of any individual engaging in an intimate act with another without first having received affirmative consent. To wit, in some governmental jurisdictions, affirmative consent is now statutory in so far as in some circumstances, the eligibility of an academic institution to receive governmental funding rests upon the institution adopting an affirmative consent policy for its students.
Affirmative consent, while intellectually a simple enough concept, in practice is substantially more challenging. In this regard, the fast pace at which an intimate relationship between two individuals arises oftentimes does not permit the opportunity for the individuals to pause and discuss the prospective intimate acts and to memorialize affirmative consent in a way so as to subsequently be reliable—particularly in a judicial, academic disciplinary, or law enforcement setting. Addressing the real world challenges to the contemporaneous memorialization of affirmative consent, a handful of mobile computing applications have been developed.
One such application relies upon the audio and video capture of both individuals providing consent to one another to engage in intimate relations. Once a face is detected, irrespective of the identity associated with the detected face, the video and audio are encrypted using local encryption on the mobile device and thereafter stored on the mobile device and eventually uploaded to a central repository wherein the encrypted video is encrypted again and stored for a multi-year period. However, in an era of constant data security lapses, maintaining a centralized repository of video of individuals agreeing to engage in intimate acts is only a mouse click away from mass publication. Further, prior to the uploading of the video imagery to the centralized repository, the possessor of the mobile device is free to publish the video to others without the consent of the other individual appearing in the video and consenting to engage in intimate relations.
Of note, it is apparent that merely consenting to intimate relations on camera is not sufficient for affirmative consent where the consenting individuals lack the capacity to consent. In this regard, it is widely understood that in the campus setting, consenting young adults may experience some degree of intoxication prior to seeking the affirmative consent of another individual for an intimate encounter. Legally, no person has the capacity to consent to intimate relations when that person is intoxicated. Thus, even if video imagery is acquired of an individual affirmatively consenting to an intimate encounter, if that individual is not sober, no consent will have been possible thereby defeating the intent of the consent mobile application.
Recognizing the inherent deficiency of consent applications lacking a confirmation of sobriety, a short-lived mobile application relied upon the manual specification of consent in a user interface of the application in the mobile device along with a self-assessment of sobriety. Were an individual seeking or providing affirmative consent to have indicated a degree of intoxication, no affirmative consent is permitted and the mobile application blocks subsequent attempts to record affirmative consent. Of course, the same data privacy concerns existed in this instance as before. More importantly, an intoxicated person is not a reliable judge of one's own degree of intoxication making the resultant recordation of affirmative consent highly unreliable. For both reasons, this particular mobile application survived only days of distribution before being retracted from the marketplace.